No one is going to mistake me for Arnold Schwarzenegger. For one thing, I’m not fool enough to be governor of California, a state has proven innumerable times to be ungovernable. Also, I am not exactly built like ol’ Arnie, all bulging biceps and chiseled chest.

But I have dreams.

No, not about trying to herd cats, also known as working with a legislature. I mean about getting all muscled up, or at least as muscled up as one can get at my advanced years.

It is toward this end that I recently spent the better part of three days putting together a large, expensive and rather intimidating home gym in my garage.

Oh, I should probably mention that it was during the heat wave, when temperatures outside the garage were in the mid-90s. And no, the garage is not air conditioned.

Now, when I call this machine intimidating I am not exaggerating. It came in seven boxes, big ones. And heavy. Just moving them from the delivery truck to the garage added two inches to my upper arms.

Inside the boxes were confusing pieces of iron which, when assembled, would create one of the world’s finest home gyms. However, they were accompanied by instructions that went beyond confusing to inscrutable. One look at them had me wondering why I didn’t just get a Richard Simmons DVD instead.

When did it become too much work for people to write instructions? Who decided that instead of put-this-here, put-that-there, tighten-the-bolt-instructions, we could do just as well with exploded drawings of the object to be assembled, accompanied by a note that said – I am not kidding – to be sure to do things in the right order, or the pieces wouldn’t fit properly?

Let’s recap. In essence, I was being told to put things together in the right order, but that I would have to figure out for myself what the right order would be. Evidently, they’re real jokesters at the home gym factory.

To make things even more entertaining, each box contained about 4,374 St. Anthony Pieces. That’s the name I give for the little doohickeys that are guaranteed to jump out of your hand and roll under a workbench or down a drain. I call them St. Anthony Pieces because I always find myself reciting the prayer to St. Anthony of Padua: “St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come down, something’s lost and can’t be found.”

How many times did I recite the prayer? Let’s just say that for a while I had St. Anthony on speed dial. And as far as I know, he’s still out there looking for a couple of washers and a four-inch stove bolt.

What I’m trying to say is it wasn’t easy. What with the heat, and the goofy directions, and occasional attacks of “Holy Moley, how am I going to pay for this thing?” it probably took me three times as long to build my gym as it would have taken a normal person. I think. If I ever meet a normal person I’ll ask.

But nothing worth having comes easy, and I know my gym is worth having. I know I’ll feel better and, I hope, look better because of it. If I ever start using the thing, that is. Right now I’m resting. Building a gym is quite a workout. Like governing California.